Epilogue
STETSON
The shower was, naturally, frog-themed.
We had the whole shindig just a month out from when our kid—a son—was due to be born. Bryn hadn’t wanted to do it any sooner, hadn’t wanted to jinx it. So we waited…and it just so happened the whole family came home for it.
Dakota, the youngest of my cousins, back from touring on the rodeo circuit.
Sawyer and Daniela, taking time off from shooting movies.
And all the usual suspects…Aunt Peggy and Uncle Adam, my mama Marlena; Gage and Millie and their growing horde of kids; Wyatt and Haven, Willa and Forrest. Even Sawyer and Forrest’s brother Emmett came out for the whole thing, usually absentee if there was any lineman work to be had.
So I found myself over at the main house, surrounded by frogs and flowers, sunshine and rainbows.
I wasn't much for parties, but this one I could stomach — mostly because half of it was just watching Bryn hold court in the middle of Peggy's living room, one hand on her belly, the other pointing out yet another detail on a frog-shaped cake somebody had special-ordered from a bakery in Fredericksburg.
"That's a chirping frog," she was telling Emmett, dead serious. "Not a bullfrog. There's a difference."
"Looks like a frog to me."
"That's the problem with most people."
Bea had appointed herself official present-opener, tearing through wrapping paper with the same single-minded focus she brought to everything, holding up a tiny onesie printed with cartoon frogs for the whole room to admire.
"Uncle Stetson, look! It matches you!"
"Doesn't match me."
"It does. You love frogs now."
I didn't argue with that one, mostly because it was true, and mostly because Bryn was grinning at me over the rim of her lemonade like she already knew I wouldn't.
Millie caught my eye from across the room, Bea's littlest sibling on her hip, and gave me the kind of look that had been aimed at me all afternoon — soft, a little disbelieving, like she still couldn't quite square the man in front of her with the one who used to sit at the edge of every family gathering instead of the middle of it.
"You good?" she asked, drifting over.
"Good."
"You're smilin'."
"Ain't smilin'."
"You are. It's freakin' me out a little."
Peggy swept past with a tray of deviled eggs before I could answer, pausing just long enough to press a kiss to my cheek, quick and fierce.
"Proud of you," she said, already moving on to referee whatever argument Dakota and Sawyer had started over the gift table. "Don't let it go to your head."
Bryn caught my hand as I made my way back to her, tugging me down onto the couch beside her, tired in the specific way she got by mid-afternoon these days, contented despite it.
"Having fun?" she asked.
"More than I figured I would."
"Told you. Family's good for you." She reached over and took my hand to thread her fingers through mine, then placed it on her belly. “Good for the tadpole too.”
I felt our son kick against my knuckles, casting a soft smile her way.
She caught it, that look, and squeezed my hand.
"He's excited," she said. "Kicks harder when it's loud in the room."
"Little troublemaker already."
"Wonder where he'd get that from."
"Not me."
"Definitely you." She tipped her head back against the couch, watching the room instead of me for a second…then she tilted her head toward the door. “Forgive me.”
I frowned. “What?”
Then I followed her gaze.
Frowned again.
My youngest brother Cooper was standing at the door, hands shoved into his pockets. No one had really noticed him yet—other than my Aunt Peggy, who seemed intent on kicking him right back out. My mother caught her arm and they exchanged a couple words, then Mom looked pointedly at Bryn.
My eyes slid back to my wife.
“Did you…”
"I invited him," Bryn said. "Three weeks ago. Got his number off your mother."
"Bryn—"
"I know what you're gonna say." She sat up straighter, one hand still resting on her belly. "That he's still tangled up in whatever Arlo's doing. That he's not exactly earned a seat at the table. I know all of it."
"Then why."
"Because he talked his own father off finding that cave with my whole future standing twenty feet away, and he's never gotten so much as a thank you for it." She held my eyes, steady. "Figured that was worth an invitation, even if he doesn't take it."
Across the room, Marlena was still talking low to Peggy, her hand firm on my aunt's arm. Peggy's jaw was tight, but she wasn't moving to throw him out either—just watching him the way you'd watch an approaching thunderhead.
Cooper hadn't moved from the doorway. Hands in his pockets, eyes doing a slow sweep of the room like he was calculating exits, the easy confidence I usually saw on him nowhere in sight. Just a man standing very still, waiting to find out if he was about to get told to leave.
I got up before I'd fully decided to.
Crossed the room.
His eyes found mine and went wary, bracing.
"You gonna throw me out?" he muttered.
"Nope.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Because you knew we were hiding in that cave, didn’t you?”
It was a gamble; I had no idea if he’d known, and that was months ago now.
But he knew right away.
Swallowed.
“Don’t know why he’s so hellbent on takin’ your land,” Cooper muttered. “It’s not that special. More money elsewhere.”
He didn’t mention how Arlo had shoved him. Didn’t need to.
"Doesn't have to make sense," I said. "Never has, with him."
Cooper's jaw worked, eyes still doing that careful sweep of the room, like he hadn't decided yet whether he trusted the ground under him.
"You could've told him," I said. "That day. Would've made things easier for you."
"Yeah." He didn't offer more than that.
"Why didn't you?"
He was quiet a second, long enough that I didn't think he'd answer at all.
"Didn't feel like it," he said finally, which wasn't an answer, and we both knew it.
"Cooper."
"Don't make it a thing, Stetson."
"Not makin' it a thing." I clapped a hand on his shoulder, same rough way I would've done for Gage or Wyatt without thinking twice about it. "Just sayin' I noticed."
Something in his face shifted, quick, gone before I could name it, same as it always did with him.
"She always this stubborn?" he asked, nodding toward Bryn. "Inviting people who weren't asked."
"You have no idea."
He almost smiled at that and looked past me toward the room, toward Bea stealing icing off the cake with her finger, toward a family that had never once made a place for him the way it had for the rest of us.
Then he finally stepped the rest of the way inside, shoulders dropping a fraction. “Guess I’m stayin’, then.”
“Guess you are.”
He ambled into the room, Haven doing me the favor of waving him over so he at least had somewhere to be—talking with her friend Amber and with a very skeptical Wyatt. I went back to Bryn, huffing as I sat back on the couch beside her.
"You handled that well," Bryn said, settling back against me.
"Didn't handle anything. Just talked to him."
"That's handling it, for you." She laced her fingers through mine again, resting both our hands on her belly, where the kid gave a solid kick like he had opinions of his own about the whole afternoon. "See? He agrees."
"Kid doesn't know what he's agreein' to yet."
"He'll learn. Whole family full of teachers.
" She nodded toward the room — Bea now attempting to recruit Cooper into a game only she understood the rules to, Haven making sure Amber kept Wyatt from hovering too close, Peggy still keeping half an eye on the doorway like she expected trouble to follow him in even now.
"Big family," Bryn said. "Loud. Messy. Half of it barely gets along."
"Yeah."
"And you're happy in it."
"Wasn't always."
"I know." She turned her head to look at me properly, sun coming through Peggy's front window and catching the gray starting at her temples that she swore wasn't there yet. "But you are now."
I thought about a creek and a woman stuck in the mud, about a cave and a father's voice I'd know anywhere, about a desk built out of nothing much and a proposal that hadn't gone how anybody plans these things to go.
About all the ways I'd spent thirty-some years standing at the edge of every room like this one, waiting for someone to tell me I didn't belong in the middle of it.
Nobody ever had. I'd just never believed it until her.
"Yeah," I said. "I am."
THE END